


dream country

by badgerterritory



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Gen, the dreaming au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 10:05:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4517721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgerterritory/pseuds/badgerterritory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a queen, a philosopher. a knight, a thief. a prince, a keeper. a healer, a warden.</p><p>a tale concerning eight dreamers and their assorted dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. philosopher//queen

**Author's Note:**

> this is part one. i have plans for part two and maybe three, as well as at least one story set in this au but not part of the main storyline. i have everything pretty solidly mapped out, and everything has its own sort of logic. i'd still appreciate it if anyone could point out any holes that need patching, considering this is a story primarily written in the middle of the night.

Somewhere, somewhen, a little girl fell asleep and woke up in a castle.

She explored the castle, feeling like she was older than she really was. She knew she was seven. She was about to celebrate her eighth birthday, in fact, once she woke up. But she felt older.

The castle was oddly shaped. And she didn’t know what any of the colors were. She felt like they were on the tip of her tongue, but the moment she reached, they flitted away like birds. She had a sense of it being hers. She knew it was hers, that is. The castle belonged to her, and it was for her.

In the massive room of books, she found someone in her castle. He looked very odd. He had much darker skin than her, and he did not dress the way anyone she knew dressed. He was older than her. Her, actual her. Perhaps not the her in the dream, although she didn’t know how dream-old she was.

“Hello, Kala,” he said cheerfully.

“Hello,” she said, carefully. And then, “This is a dream.”

“All of life is a dream.” He did not seem to be agreeing or disagreeing. “It is up to us to find the truth in each dream.”

“This is a dream,” she said again. This time less certainly.

He laughed. She noticed he was not looking at her; he was looking through her. Past her, perhaps. And he seemed like he was talking to someone else. It made her relax. The man in her dream was simply talking to someone else in her dream, who she could not see.

Then he looked at her and smiled.

“Kala!”

Kala sat upright, nearly hitting her mother’s head. “We were worried,” her mother said gently, smoothing her hair. “You weren’t waking up.”

“I had a strange dream,” she said, and then smiled as she remembered what day it was. Within minutes, any thought of her dream vanished.

/              /              /

She hated her body with a passion. The gangly, awkward limbs. The voice that didn’t work how she wanted it to. And the fact that her body was doing things she didn’t want it to, things that her mother told her were _natural_ , but there wasn’t anything natural about a body that was slowly killing her.

But in her dreams, her body was different. Better.

She always woke in a tower. There was a dragon sleeping outside, its heads curled up just beneath her window. There was no way in or out except the window, but she never felt trapped. In fact, she’d never felt more free.

Her body was beautiful. She had curves, hips and breasts and thighs, and she was always wearing the most beautiful dresses as she slid off the bed. She usually changed. There were many outfits, always perfectly tailored to her body. That night, she chose an elegant blouse, pairing it with a wonderful pair of pants and her favorite boots. She pulled on a jacket, the same color as her pants and incredibly dashing. As she looked in the mirror, she saw a young woman fit to rule an empire.

And it was her. She knew it was. She stepped over to the window, calling out gently to the dragon. It had no name. That was how it preferred matters, after all. It huffed and looked at her, one of its heads nodding its approval.

Then it assembled its heads in a form that would allow her to travel from the tower to the castle proper. She did not know how many heads the dragon had. Nor, she suspected, would she ever know.

She descended from the roof to a balcony, which led to a grand bedroom. Nomi always felt it was for her, resplendent in reds and purples and golds, but she also always felt like the tower was more her home. Perhaps she’d grow into the bedroom later. Perhaps not. She was still working on believing the castle was for her. When she was a child, she’d believed wholeheartedly. But she wasn’t sure any longer. Sometimes she caught glimpses of others, others she didn’t know. But who seemed familiar, after a fashion.

They never saw her, and they never talked to her.

She wandered the castle for a while. She saw the libraries, the kitchens, the wide, vast windows. She’d seen it all before, but she was seeing it for the first time.

Then she came across an old woman, lying on the floor. She had a prosthetic arm, a simple plastic thing. She was certain the old woman was dead, certain of it in the way one can only be in a dream, but when she approached the old woman, she opened her eyes. “God help you,” she said in a familiar accent, and then Nomi was awake.

Except, more and more, Nomi wasn’t sure she really was dreaming in the castle.


	2. knight//thief

She didn’t know how old she was, or why she was in the castle. She didn’t know her name, or what she was. There was a routine to her life, though.

She would wake up, and the blue sun would be poking over the horizon. She always woke in the armory, a large room with three solid walls and one made entirely of glass, facing the sunrise. Two walls were covered entirely with weapons and armor, and the third had a mural of the sun. The weapons and armor did not interest her, except to take care of. They belonged to her. The castle was hers. Those things she knew.

She would exercise, every day. And train. It was vitally important, even though she didn’t know why.

After she trained, she would sit down in front of the mural of the sun. It was very large, and had words scrawled across the bottom. They were different every day. She never read them. She sat there, for two hours, and then moved on.

She would return to training. It was important. She needed to be ready. She did not know what for.

Sometimes, she slowed and thought. Wondered what she was doing, where she was. It was hard to think about. Easier to just go along with her routine.

After her second training session, she would care for the weapons and armor. She had no desire to use the weapons, or to wear the armor, but they still needed tending to.

It was in the middle of this task that she was interrupted. She was aware of it first as a vague presence, and then eyes on the back of her head. She did not turn as she said, “I am alone in this.”

“No, you aren’t,” a cheerful man’s voice said. “I think I am dreaming. But I do not think you are part of the dream.”

“I am not dreaming,” she said, but she was not certain.

“This is a wonderful place,” he said, and she heard him walking further away, to the other wall, but his voice was just as loud as if he was next to her. “These are all very beautiful. Not as tools of violence, but in their own right. I do not like violence, even though my home is a very violent place. Did you know there is a dragon outside this room?”

She did not know that.

“It is a very kind dragon,” he continued, walking closer. “Very unlike the monsters I have to deal with. Twelve feet long and breathing fire, although thankfully only one head!”

That sentence was so strange, even to a woman that knew nothing, that she turned her head. There was nobody in the room. But she saw the mural of the sun, and remembered her name, and why she had to prepare, and she opened her eyes in a different place.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked the white sky. “Am I dead?”

“No,” her father said beside her.

/              /              /

There was very little to occupy him in the castle. He always woke in the vault, surrounded by beautiful things, and it felt so empty. Like a caricature of who he was. So he set out.

There was much to explore, but little to do. At home, if he was bored, he could simply lift a few wallets or daydream about cracking the safes his father would never dream of. But what was the point of stealing from oneself? And besides, even wandering had its merits. He enjoyed simply wandering and feeling. There were parts of the castle that made him feel older than himself, and parts that made him feel younger. Sometimes he saw people in the distance, but he never bothered them.

He saw her before she saw him, a young girl wearing a white dress, blonde curls pinned up neatly. She was watching herself, on the ground, frozen in fear, hands flung up in front of her face, mouth noiselessly open. “This is not who you are,” he said to the standing girl. She nodded briefly, and the girl on the ground disappeared, and the standing girl was much older. Perhaps in her fifties, wearing a sharp suit and leaning on a cane. Her face was scarred. The scars, he knew, extended beyond what he could see. She was weary.

“Beware, beware,” she said, a wry twist to her words. “You look so young. I forgot how young we were, once. I wonder if this is the meeting you told me about. I always start the same way, just in case.”

“Am I dreaming?” It seemed prudent to ask. For some reason he couldn’t fathom. But she simply smiled at him.

“If this is a dream,” she said in a voice like she was quoting someone else, “then it follows that you will wake up. But what if that is the dream? What if you simply fall asleep here, and wake there, in a dream? Or what if neither is a dream? Or both?”

She was intentionally confusing the issue, he thought. She knew the answer. She just didn’t want to say. Or couldn’t say.

“I can’t say,” she said. “I don’t want to say. Is there really a difference between the two? Especially here?”

She read his mind.

“I did not read your mind.”

She was deliberately being an ass.

“I am not,” she said indignantly, although with a smile on her face. “Find the armory. Find the knight. She is the cornerstone of our defense. You are the thief that plucks our victory from the claws of the enemy. Help the healer. Then find the philosopher. She’ll need what you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was a lie. He knew. Somehow. She smiled at him, and hugged him, briefly.

“So young,” she sighed. “The healer wakes in the courtyard, if you want to find him. He knows the way to the armory, if you can’t find it yourself. Stay away from the keeper. She isn’t awake yet.”

She glanced behind her once, and left.

Wolfgang walked, looking for the armory.


	3. prince//keeper

Where he woke could be called a stage, if one was prone to understatement. It was grand, almost a palace unto itself. He was in love the moment he saw it. It was the finest stage he’d ever seen, and he was born for it. The stage in general, that is. But especially that stage.

There was a castle beyond, he knew. But he had very little interest in exploring it, not when he had a stage that responded to his imagination. Not quite the stage, really; there were ethereal creatures, made of light, that responded to what he wanted. They could become props, or change the scenery. He was slowly teaching them to become actors. As far as he knew, they couldn’t speak, but most of his plays had only one role, anyways. He’d perform them for his family, and his father would always praise him, while the rest of the family told him the truth.

He was in the middle of rehearsing one such play, about a young boy who is tragically confined to his room after a simple accident that could befall anyone, really, and his eventual triumph over the evil forces imprisoning him (by love and trickery) when he became aware of a watcher.

“No, please,” the boy said. “Don’t stop.”

The boy was younger than he was, perhaps ten. He had a sunny smile on his face that put him at ease. This was someone who made him feel safe.

“Some context is needed,” he said. He launched into an explanation for the play, including why he wrote it, who it was aimed at, and what the purpose of it was. Then he started over, from the beginning. The performance was ten minutes, but he kept forgetting his lines or getting distracted by his audience’s laughter and light-hearted heckling, and that drew it out longer.

When he finally finished the performance, he relaxed next to the stranger who seemed so familiar, and heard something. Something faint. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

“Oh,” the boy said. “I think that’s just the castle.” He didn’t believe that. Neither did the boy, by the look on his face. “I hear it sometimes. In the halls that make me feel older. The lights get all agitated when I hear it, start crowding around me.”

“The lights?”

The boy gestured to the ethereal beings, some of whom were waiting nearby, seeming attentive. “I call them lights,” he declared. “They’re all over the castle. Nowhere near as many as here, though. And they don’t do anything I ask, not like for you. None of the others I met can see them, but the philosopher thinks she can make them visible to everyone.”

The sound was getting louder. It sounded like whispering. The lights were getting agitated, he noticed. Shivering in place, starting towards him and backing away. “The philosopher?” he asked, to distract himself.

“Kala.” He smiled nervously, glancing around, obviously hearing the same thing. “She’s really smart. I don’t think I’ve met anyone smarter.”

They stayed close together, talking about anything and everything, until Lito woke up.

/              /              /

The first time she saw the gardens, she worried she was having another deer nightmare. But these deer were aggressively gentle, tracking her down to gently nuzzle her and get chin scratches, and from then on she fell in love with the garden.

It wasn’t that they had no gardens in Iceland. It was simply that the flowers in the garden were not, as far as she knew, possible outside of her dreams. Flowers with impossible geometry, with colors she couldn’t name, that occasionally got up and walked. It was her favorite dream, and she loved going to sleep at night so she could dream it. But lately, there was something creeping at the edges. She didn’t know what it was, only that she didn’t like it.

When she was visiting her favorite tree, a massive oak with a comfortable resting place among its roots, she found a man waiting there. He was the same age as her, but there was something wrong about him. “This is not who you are,” she said decisively. Sure of it.

He simply smiled. “You have to wake up soon. Find me. Go into the castle.”

He said it as a suggestion and an order. She was about to say she didn’t know how to get in the castle, when he motioned his head, and she looked. There was a door. She didn’t know how she hadn’t seen the door before. When she looked back, he was gone.

She was starting to get a headache.

It built as she approached the door. She didn’t want to open it, but she knew she had to. She could feel one of the deer behind her, pawing at the ground anxiously. Trying to reach the door, to actually open it, felt like straining against chains.

But she finally touched it, and everything popped. There were no more deer, no more flowers. Only the sparse trees, and fluttering, anxious beings of light. She no longer had a headache, but she felt odd. Like she was no longer in a dream. She went through the door.

Inside the castle, there were more of the beings. They regarded her curiously, but did not approach, and did not seem anxious like the ones in the garden. They floated about, perhaps tending to tasks that only they knew about, and ignored her. There was a swirl of them heading somewhere, far down the hall. They looked like a funeral procession. She got the impression of someone she knew…

“Hello,” someone said, and she turned. It was the same man, but this time there was no sense of him being wrong in his skin. She said hello back, and smiled at him. And he smiled back.

She was not a child. She had experience with having feelings for people. But she felt like a giggling schoolgirl again, giddy at the thought of her first crush. Her heart was fluttering. The man said, “My name is Will. I think I’m supposed to help you.”

He extended his hand. She placed her hand in his, and instantly she knew things.

She was waking up. And they had work to do.


	4. healer//warden

He saw himself, older. Perhaps in his sixties. He was with a woman wearing an elegant blue dress. She had a blade strapped to her hip, and it weighed down part of her dress oddly. He was wearing casual clothes, a shirt and shorts. It showed off the scars. Some were burn scars, some were cuts, some were holes. They covered his body. And his face. But it didn’t stop him from smiling.

Older-he said, “I’m so young. Look at me! Do you remember being so young?”

“Not really,” the woman said with a small smile. “But I met a younger version of me before. She was around four, I think. I can’t believe we wandered around this place without injuring ourselves when we were that young.”

He didn’t understand. Older-he said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. It’ll make more sense when you’re an old man like me, on this side of the conversation!” Older-he laughed. He didn’t know what to make of that, older-his laughter, so he just nodded.

The woman glanced past them, at something down the hall. When he looked, there was nothing. She leaned closer to him. “Listen to the whispers,” she murmured. “You’re the only one who can. He’s arrogant. He says things he shouldn’t, because he believes none of us can hear him. By the time he figures it out, it’s too late. Remember to dream, that’s the most important part. Besides that, just do what you do best. Care about us.”

There was little else to say. He didn’t know what to say, and they were apparently finished talking. They left. Shortly after, someone found him. Or perhaps they found each other.

“You’re Wolfgang,” he said.

“You’re the healer,” his new friend said in return, slightly questioning. He raised his shoulder in a brief shrug, but knew enough to know that he was, in fact, this healer.

“You’re the thief,” he said, and as he said it, he heard the whispering in the distance. Lately, more and more, he was hearing the whispering, and he didn’t know what to make of it. “You want to see the knight,” he continued, ignoring the whispers for the time being. “She is in the armory. I will take you to her.”

The walk went in a companionable silence. There was very little to say.

In the armory, she was meditating, but she was also waiting for them. “Someone’s coming for us,” she said. “Here and there. There, I was in a coma until recently. I do not know who he is. His name is Whispers.”

Listen to the whispers, she had said.

“There is work to do,” she said. “Here and there. We’ll need the warden. And we’ll need the keeper. They won’t be far apart. She said we need your powers, too.”

He didn’t quite know what that meant, although he could guess that a healer would have some sort of healing powers. Still, it was something to be puzzled about some other day: The knight was talking, explaining what she found while There, how it applied to the Here. It seemed to be very important, so he paid attention.

/              /              /

He was in a room with three people, including himself. The warden, the keeper, the philosopher. “I know you,” the philosopher said, in an uncertain tone. He got the impression that the philosopher was uncertain about very few things. She was incredibly intelligent. “Have I met you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve met you. When I was a lot younger.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “You’re the one who told me about the lights.”

“The lights?” the keeper asked. He gestured to the lights around them. One, humanoid-shaped, was fluttering its arms at them. She let out a soft “Ah” and nodded. “They made me a garden before I was awake. You really can’t see them?”

The philosopher was clearly startled, but only for a moment. He got the same impression from her. He knew older-he could read minds, although he had begun to wonder if older-his ability was simply due to familiarity, or if older-he could really read minds. They had only met a few times, and he’d never thought to ask. “I wasn’t aware I should be able to,” she said. “I wasn’t aware they existed until I was told. And even then I needed to be convinced.”

“I think they’re angels,” the keeper said in a soft, quiet voice, but she didn’t believe it.

“No,” he said. “I think they’re here to help us. And to warn us.”

Both he and the keeper were watching the light, as its fluttering grew more intense. They were in the south-west tower, which was a laboratory. It wasn’t where the philosopher woke up in the castle, but it was where she felt at home.

They heard a rumble from the dragon that lived on top of the tower. Its eye appeared in one of the windows, and then lowered, and a young woman stepped in. She had an air of being in her wrong skin, but not the same as when their older selves disguised themselves younger, which they did on occasion. He thought it more like someone who put on a body for the mirror instead of for herself. She wore something not unlike a military uniform, but more regal. “I’m here on my own orders,” she said, her voice clearly conveying her exasperation and confusion with the situation. “Two of you need to come with me.”

They understood immediately. He and the keeper stood. The philosopher glanced around briefly, looking for lights, and said, “I will stay here. I think it would be useful for us to see these lights.”

The light was nearly vibrating, clearly even more agitated now that the queen had arrived. And then the queen stepped inside, and it stopped. It floated sedately to her, and then back to the philosopher. “Come on,” the queen said, motioning briefly.

As they stepped outside with her, he said, “This isn’t what you’re supposed to look like.”

The queen stiffened, angry for some reason he didn’t know. “And you’re an expert on what I should look like?”

He chose his next words carefully. “Your older self looks different.”

Some of her anger dissipated, but not much. “My older self is older.” She walked on ahead, across the dragon’s heads. Onto the roof, and then dropping from the roof to a balcony. He followed her, with the keeper following behind him.

“You’ve made her angry.” She wrapped his fingers with hers. “You should apologize to her.”

He agreed. He apologized when they dropped to the balcony, and the queen let go of the rest of her anger. “I’m sorry, too,” she said quietly. “I knew what you meant, I think. And even if you knew, I know you wouldn’t be as malicious as the people I’m used to. I’m just too used to people hurting me, I guess.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, for a different reason this time. She just shrugged lightly.

She took them through the castle, through a part he had never seen before. He did not let go of the keeper’s hand. It felt right, in a way.

She took them to the armory, which was strangely devoid of lights. Most of them were there. He automatically knew who was missing: The philosopher, of course, who was in her tower, and the prince, who was likely at his stage, if he was in the castle at all. Although he might seek them out, if the stage was full of whispers. “Go,” said the knight to the thief, who left. She turned to her other companion next, the healer. “You should find the prince. If he’s to be our liar, he’ll need to be apprised.”

“I thought I was the leader.” There was good humor in the queen’s voice, and the knight simply smiled at her. “I brought the warden and the keeper. We can start planning now.”

“First,” the knight said, “you need to know how to tell the difference between here, and there.”


End file.
